until you listen the the fan blazing away, even the 120mm fans under load. if you can score a 100amp+ psu for a bill... you will *love* it as it will run cooler, 4x quieter and live ALOT longer than a psu that is 90% taxed.

This is bad advice, sorry.

to each there own. but under utilizing a psu :

*will* make it last longer.*will* draw less wattage at the wall with the SAME*draw* from the hardware .. just ask anotherengineer*will* run COOLER*will* not need the fan to run hardly at all making it quieter.

Last edited by maxxcool on Fri May 02, 2014 10:20 am, edited 2 times in total.

Cybert said: Capitlization and periods are hard for you, aren't they? I've given over $100 to techforums. I should have you banned for my money.

As DPete27 suggested, the $30 CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo would cool at least as well for less money.

redwood36 wrote:

Motherboard Asus Z87-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard $134.99

I will also agree with DPete27 that a micro-ATX solution like the $125 Asus Z87M-Plus should meet all of your needs.

redwood36 wrote:

Memory G.Skill Ares Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory $156.99

Do not buy a 4x4 GiB memory kit. If you need 16 GiB of memory for your art applications, buy that as a 2x8 GiB kit. You'll get better performance with two DIMMs than with four, and you'll still have two slots free if you ever need to go up to 32 GiB of memory in the future. This memory defaults to PC3-12800, but it includes an XMP profile for PC3-14900 (DDR3-1866), as well:$150 2x8 GiB PC3-12800 Crucial BLS2K8G3D1609ES2LX0 (DDR3-1600, CAS 9, 1.35 V, low profile)

redwood36 wrote:

Video Card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 2GB WINDFORCE Video Card $338.98

This is a good graphics card, but you're getting close to the $380 price point of the much more powerful Radeon R9-290 4GiB.

redwood36 wrote:

Case Corsair 750D ATX Full Tower Case $139.99

That is a huge 71.7 liter case. I have been pleased with the $100 Silverstone Temjin TJ08-E, which takes up only 30.2 liters.

If you're going to spend that much, you might as well look at a SeaSonic PSU like the $122 SSR-750RM or the $99 SSR-650RM.

Stick to a 3gb vram or 4gb vram card.. it will pay you back in the future since you hold onto builds for 3-4 years. Were are right at the point were some games (bf4, hero based games like swtor) loose a few % points for 2gb vram frame buffers. In 2-3 years i imagine that will be the norm and well see a additional TR metric showing the frame loss on 2gb VS 4gb cards.

Cybert said: Capitlization and periods are hard for you, aren't they? I've given over $100 to techforums. I should have you banned for my money.

Compared to what? PSUs should generally be chosen to run at 50% duty cycle when under (typical) peak load. The only real tangible difference in longevity beyond that is quality of the unit.

maxxcool wrote:

but under utilizing a psu : ... *will* draw less wattage at the wall with the SAME*draw* from the hardware .. just ask anotherengineer

This is false in the context you're using. Power draw from the wall is based on efficiency which is a function of the duty cycle, not the max rated wattage. A 600W PSU will inherently be more efficient supplying 300W (50% duty cycle) to a system (like the one in the OP) than a 1200W PSU supplying the same amount of power (25% duty cycle).

maxxcool wrote:

but under utilizing a psu :*will* run COOLER*will* not need the fan to run hardly at all making it quieter.

Irrelevant if you buy a good quality PSU whose fan is barely audible under typical load anyway.

Regarding AMD(ATi) vs Nvidia reliability, I was dealing with mostly Geforce & Quadro cards up until the GTX285, the last of which died or was replaced about 18 months ago.When Nvidia switched to Fermi/Kepler they murdered their compute and DP FLOPS performance and I started buying GCN cards (mostly Radeons and not FireGL).

Over the last five years and maybe 1000 graphics cards, I've had to replace maybe 20-30 Nvidia cards and 3 AMD cards which is close enough to call even in the reliability stakes.

Yesterday, I (a minion, actually) assembled PC numbers 190-196 since the AMD graphics switchover, meaning my failure rates are roughly proportional to the number of cards we've had from each vendor, considering their age and service time difference too.

got a Vendor statistic list ?

Not for RMA's. Since I dealt with the majority of them though, I can tell you that several of the non-stock failed Nvidia cards were either PNY or BFG. Cheap-ass Geforces like Inno3D were unexpectedly reliable with no known failures and about 50-75 deployed cards.Of the OEM Quadro/Geforce cards, they were either Dell labelled or completely unbranded. Couldn't tell you who actually made them.

On the AMD side of things, I've had a dead Asus, a dead Sapphire and a dead XFX. The Asus was a memory failure, the Sapphire was board sag, and the XFX was faulty right from the start, I think it crashed during software imaging. I've been avoiding XFX because of low ASIC quality, high voltages and noisy coolers (goes with the low prices I guess). I've been avoiding Sapphire recently because their RMA process is a PITA. By volume, I suspect more than half of our cards are Powercolor Pitcairn/Tahiti models. I expect some of the Powercolors to die like the Sapphire with board sag, but I've found that Powercolor now put backplates on many of their cards, which I find encouraging - and so buy those. To date, I've never had a dead FireGL though we probably only ever had 80 in the first place and I suspect that number is down to less than 25 now.

EditNow that I've caught up with the thread, I find this argument over PSU rating rather amusing! A PSU that's at peak efficiency (usually around 50% load) is what you want, and to hell with the fan noise from the PSU; Any GPU worth a damn these days will make far more noise than the PSU under load. Even one of the premium cards with a fancy triple-fan, full-length, multi-heatpiped cooler is still going to make 40+ dBA and you have a *bad* PSU if its fan makes more noise than that.

Congratulations, you've noticed that this year's signature is based on outdated internet memes; CLICK HERE NOW to experience this unforgettable phenomenon. This sentence is just filler and as irrelevant as my signature.

Compared to what? PSUs should generally be chosen to run at 50% duty cycle when under (typical) peak load. The only real tangible difference in longevity beyond that is quality of the unit.

maxxcool wrote:

but under utilizing a psu : ... *will* draw less wattage at the wall with the SAME*draw* from the hardware .. just ask anotherengineer

This is false in the context you're using. Power draw from the wall is based on efficiency which is a function of the duty cycle, not the max rated wattage. A 600W PSU will inherently be more efficient supplying 300W (50% duty cycle) to a system (like the one in the OP) than a 1200W PSU supplying the same amount of power (25% duty cycle).

maxxcool wrote:

but under utilizing a psu :*will* run COOLER*will* not need the fan to run hardly at all making it quieter.

Irrelevant if you buy a good quality PSU whose fan is barely audible under typical load anyway.